THE PRESIDENT: Good afternoon. Yesterday, Speaker
Gingrich, Senator Dole and I reached an agreement to work together in
good faith to balance the budget and to reopen the government. Today
the most extreme members of the House of Representatives rejected that
agreement.

These Republicans want to force the government to stay
closed until I accept their deep and harmful cuts in Medicare and
Medicaid, in education, in the environment, and agree to raise taxes on
the hardest pressed working families -- all, in part, to pay for their
very large tax cut.

I won't yield to these threats. I'm determined to balance
the budget. But I won't be forced into signing a budget that violates
our values -- not today, or tomorrow; not ever.

This is a very troubling development. The President and
the leaders of the two chambers of Congress reached an agreement on a
matter of great national urgency. But a small minority in the House of
Representatives is determined to keep the government closed until they
get exactly their way. Their way is the wrong way for America.

We should reopen the government now. We should work to
balance the budget now. We should start the negotiations without any
threats, without more ultimatums, without continuing this shutdown.
This shutdown hurts the very people we are duty-bound to serve. If
Congress doesn't vote to reopen the government by tomorrow morning, 3.3
million veterans will not receive their benefits on time. If Congress
fails to act by Friday, 8 million children will not receive their
benefits on time. Every day of the shutdown, 20,000 college loan and
scholarship applications go unprocessed. Air and water pollution goes
unstopped because they've taken all the environmental protectors off the
job.

Christmas is only days away. I have said before and I will
say again, we ought to be guided by the spirit of the season, not the
spirit of partisanship. We can balance the budget in a way that
reflects our values and is good for our future, but only if we put aside
rancor and extremism. I say again, I hope that we can go to work.

Q Mr. President, what can you do about this? Do you have
any recourse to get these benefit checks to these poor people?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I'm hoping that Congress will move on
the veterans benefits today. And, of course, I hope they will move on
the other thing.

Q Can they do that independently --

THE PRESIDENT: Apparently, they can. I have talked to
Senator Dole twice today. I just got off the phone with him a few
minutes ago, and we have -- I don't want to reveal exactly what we said
because I think that he's making a good-faith effort here to honor the
agreement we made.

Q Can you clear up the question, Mr. President, about
whether you're willing to score your budget on the CBO? There seems to
be some dispute about that and, in fact, Republicans are blaming this
breakdown on what Vice President Gore said last night just minutes after
this apparent agreement was struck.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, there's no doubt -- there's no
difference about what the discussion was and what the agreement was. I
have said -- if you go back to the agreement in the last continuing
resolution, I have said that any budget we agree to would have to be
scored by the Congressional Budget Office as being in balance. That's
what I said, and I say that again.

What the Vice President said last night was that should not
be taken to preclude our ability to discuss in the budget negotiation
the specific suggestions we have already made, or any discussions we
still have about what we think ought to be considered in the ultimate
decision of the Congressional Budget Office. That's all we said. We
have never disputed the fact that the final agreement, once we make it,
would have to be scored by the Congressional Budget Office as being in
balance.

Q Mr. President, what the agreement that occurred
yesterday apparently had to do with whether any plan, any budget plan
that did not meet that standard could be on the table as part of the
talks. That seemed to be Mr. Gingrich's understanding. Mr. Gore saw it
a different way. And that appears to have been at the root of all this.
Did the way the Speaker worded his understanding of this yesterday --
did that get it wrong, in your view?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I don't think that is at the root of
all this. There was a clear understanding, and I believe our staffs
agreed on it, that we would come back with our ideas.

As I said to them, I would actually -- I offered them two
options. We would either go back and take the other budgets that had
been proposed as a starting point, and work together to try to get a
balanced budget that would be scored as balanced by the CBO; or if they
wanted me to put one down right now that would be scored right now as
balanced by the CBO, I would do that, but they would have to come to the
Medicare and Medicaid investment levels that I had recommended because
I've already moved three times as much as they have.

Q Just to follow, Mr. President, Senate Democrats have now
coming forward with a plan today very much like yours in some important
respects. It does get to balance in seven years using CBO numbers now.
They apparently -- the Republicans say they're prepared to talk about
that one. Are you prepared --

THE PRESIDENT: We said we were prepared to talk about --

Q -- to endorse that one and make that your starting
point?

THE PRESIDENT: No, but I'm prepared to discuss that in the
context of the negotiations. We encouraged everybody who wanted to come
out with a plan to come out with it and we would discuss them all and we
would see where we are on that.

Q -- just a small minority. Why are they so powerful?
What do you think is behind it?

THE PRESIDENT: I think that there has been a decision on
every issue except the environment, where some moderate Republicans
decided that they could no longer go along with it, to put those people
in control of the House of Representatives. And they have varied -- the
moderate Republicans who have disagreed with them, I think, on many,
many issues have broken ranks with them, to the best of my knowledge,
only on the environment -- and then in a modest way.

Now, sooner or later, they're either going to have to let
the Speaker honor his commitments -- that group. And if they're not
going to do that, because what they really want is to end the role of
the federal government in our life -- which they have, after all, been
very open about. I mean, a lot of them will be happy about this because
they don't think we ought to have a government up here anyway. And the
tail will keep wagging the dog over there until those moderate
Republicans find a way to do what they did on a couple of the
environmental votes, or until they decide to let the Speaker honor his
commitment.

Q You're saying that these people control the Speaker of
the House; he doesn't control them?

THE PRESIDENT: No. First of all, I don't think he ever
asserted that he controlled them. I am saying that at the present time,
they control what their decisions -- the leadership decisions, which are
in the hand of this very conservative group, the anti-government group,
control what the shape of the measures that come up for a vote. That's
what this is. And there are only two ways to resolve this, I think. We
either -- over the long run, other options that could get the support of
both Democrats and Republicans will have to be permitted to come to the
floor of the Congress, or they will have to give the Speaker at least
the leeway to do what he said he would do yesterday when we left.

Q Mr. President, since so much is at stake right now, all
these veterans benefits and these other benefits, why don't you simply
pick up the phone and call the Speaker the Senate Majority Leader and
invite them to come back to the White House and rack your brains and not
leave until there is an agreement that can be implemented?

THE PRESIDENT: First of all, I had an agreement last
night. I don't know who I'm supposed to make an agreement with. But
what the Vice President said is not the basis on which this agreement
came -- I will do anything I can to reach an honorable agreement. But
the people in the House are misreading their own agreement. They voted
for the other continuing resolution. The other continuing resolution
has us agreeing, our side agreeing, to work for a balanced budget in
seven years, that the agreement would be scored by the CBO as being in
balance. It has them agreeing to work to meet our standards of
protecting Medicare and Medicaid, education and the environment.

And ever since that agreement was reached their group has
treated this as a one-way street. And I'm hoping that we can find a way
out of this.

Let me say, I'm happy to meet with anybody, anytime. But
it's hard for me to know -- what would happen now is -- I mean, we can
only conclude that what would happen now is that the three of us could
sit down and make an agreement with Senator Daschle and Representative
Gephardt and then everybody would be for it, and they'd take it back to
the House and the same crowd would say, no, thank you, we want exactly
what we passed.

Q So what you're saying is there's absolutely nothing else
that you can do to meet with them because of this group?

THE PRESIDENT: No, no, no. Wait a minute, no, no. I just
told you I've already had two conversations with Senator Dole and that
we're trying to work this out. We're working at this moment. And I do
not -- I believe when Speaker Gingrich left here yesterday he intended
to come back today and begin the negotiations with the continuing
resolution going on.

But you're asking me why we're not meeting right now. I'm
telling you what we have to determine is who we can meet with and expect
if we give our word and somebody else gives their word, that whatever we
say is going to be done will get done. That's what we've got to
determine.

Q Mr. President, why is it necessary for you to get an
agreement from --

Q Mr. President, does the government have to be reopened?
Because last night there was no talk of that being a precondition when
both sides came out. And if you did reach an agreement with the
Democratic and Republican leaders, presumably you would have enough
votes in Congress to override the Republicans.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, that's what we thought. And that
might be the case now if such a vote were to be taken. And I think
that's one of the things that's being discussed. But I think it's very
important that all of you understand here, you've got a group of people
that in my judgment do not represent even the majority in the House of
Representatives, and certainly not the majority opinion of Republicans
in America who are prepared to shut the entire government down unless we
agree with their priorities. That's what's going on.

And they today made it impossible for an agreement made in
good faith between the President, the Speaker of the House, and the
Leader of the Senate to be implemented.

Now, I am, obviously, willing to do whatever I can to
continue whatever constructive talks can be continued. But I showed up
today ready to do my part, and the thing that you have in this business
that has to work is when you say you're going to do something, it has to
be that way.